Uri Berliner

As Senior Editor at NPR, Uri Berliner oversees coverage of business and the economy. He has supervised and edited much of NPR's work on the financial crisis, the auto industry, energy and the workplace. Berliner has helped to build Planet Money, a prize-winnng multimedia team that covers the global economy.

Until recently, Berliner also edited NPR's sports coverage and was part of a team that won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Berliner came to NPR in 1999 from California, where he worked as a reporter for 12 years at daily newspapers in San Diego and Santa Barbara. At the San Diego Union-Tribune, he covered wildfires, street gangs, the border and military issues before becoming the paper's economics correspondent. His feature writing and investigative reporting earned several awards.

In 1998, Berliner was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where he studied business, history and economics. The following year he moved to Washington, D.C.

Originally from New York City, Berliner received his undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence College, and went on to receive his Master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Quietly on election night, overshadowed by the epic battle between blue and red, the map of America grew greener. Voters in four states — California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine — chose to legalize recreational marijuana. In Florida, Arkansas, Montana and North Dakota, ballot measures passed allowing pot to be used for medical purposes. (Only Arizona bucked the trend, saying no to recreational weed).

Self-driving cars have been getting a lot of attention lately: Uber's self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh, Tesla's semi-autonomous Model S and the driverless Google rides that look like a cross between a Cozy Coupe and a golf cart. But quietly and without much fanfare, researchers and entrepreneurs are working on self-driving trucks — big rigs, tractor trailers.

Much of the anger and anxiety in the 2016 election are fueled by the sense that economic opportunity is slipping away for many Americans. This week, as part of NPR's collaborative project with member stations, A Nation Engaged, we're asking the question: What can be done to create economic opportunity for more Americans?

Some financial experts want to introduce a tool to help people plan for retirement better. It's a very old tool, discarded and almost forgotten. But for centuries it was used to build bridges, fancy meeting halls and to provide people with income in their old age. That is, before it was undone by fraud and ghoulish portrayals in popular culture.

Comfortable with technology and skeptical of Wall Street, a growing number of young investors have turned to low-fee automated financial advisers for help saving for retirement.

They're called roboadvisers — or robos — and they appeal to Jesus Adrian Perez, 29, a biometric analyst from Albuquerque, N.M., because he knows what's at stake when lots of charges are tacked on to investments.

"I hear about investment advisers — that their fees are always really high, and you end up losing a lot of money in the long run," Perez says.

Walk into a bar or spend some time in an airport and there's a good chance ESPN is on TV. What happens on its ever-present SportsCenter, airing live 18 times daily, resonates with sports fans around the country. So it matters that over the past couple of years, ESPN has increased coverage of what's always been an extremely sensitive topic for leagues and TV networks — sports betting.

ESPN says it wants to be more direct about a topic broadcasters have dealt with circuitously, often with a wink and nod, rather than in the direct language of gambling.

Many things made with paper have become relics because of computers and the Internet: the Rolodex, multivolume encyclopedias, even physical maps.

Now take a look in your mailbox or somewhere around your house. There's a good chance you'll see a shopping catalog, maybe a few of them now that it's the holiday season.

"I ignore them," says Rick Narad, a professor at California State University, Chico. "I get them in the mail sometimes, and they don't make it into the house. I walk past the recycling bin, and they go right in."

Several years ago, South Carolina had a problem: a shortage of skilled workers and no good way to train young people for the workforce. So at a time when apprenticeship programs were in decline in the U.S., the state started a program called Apprenticeship Carolina.